>In a message dated 11/21/00 10:38:24 PM Eastern Standard Time, >mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com writes: > >>Anyone ever hear of a Jasper American Piano? I tuned a 42" console today >>that was reported to be about 5 years old. It had the name of a local small >>time piano dealer bolted/nailed/screwed/glued to the plate and to the >>fallboard. > >The Parent corporation of Kimball is Jasper American Inc. This name was used >to provide "exclusive" dealerships to more than one dealer in a given area. > >Its a Kimball. > In other words, Jaspers were the extraordinarily low ball "loss leader" units that dealers could have their own name plates on -- and of course these units invariably had "zero prep" (at least in my slight experience with them). Instead of the high flight tune-offs between Coleman & Smith, the ultimate PTG challenge might have been having a couple of our superstars each uncrate one of those puppies, and after a frenzy of string seating and hammer needling, see what they could turn them into. With a new set of bass strings ( I don't know whether a rescaling would improve the situation, but the quality of the sets were often very poor) -- perhaps replace the "fake buckskin" with real buckskin, etc. one might have a spinet or console you wouldn't mind retuning annually (well, *maybe*). Just a thought, Patrick
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